hile
the sessions of the legislature -- what they might or might
not do, and chiefly in reference to sectional questions --
were still the chief topics of public interest, they were
becoming less exclusively so; and in the interval between
the fifth and sixth sessions, consideration of land sales,
the territorial fair, state government, party organizations
and conventions, and the annexation of the South Platte
section to Kansas afforded busy and healthful diversion, and
the attempt to sustain some view of these important subjects
served to strengthen the wings of a strenuous but still
fledgling press. The newspapers boomed the gold mines for
the sake of the resulting advantage of the traffic thereto
across the Plains, and commendation of the route starting
from their town and depreciation of the others by the
journals respectively of Omaha, Nebraska City, and
Brownville, in point of energy and glowing headlines, are
the reminders if not the full prototype of the present-day
yellow journalism.

SALE OF THE
PUBLIC LANDS.
Sale of the public lands, which had been fought off, as we
have seen, by heroic spirit and effort, was now accepted
without remonstrance, not because it was desired by the
settlers, but rather because it was regarded as inevitable.
The sale was advertised to take place at Nebraska City
August 1st to 29th; at Omaha, July 5th to 25th; at Dakota,
July 18th, and at Brownville, August 8th and September 5,
1859. The sales were confined to specific townships north of
the base line and east of the 6th meridian, the Sac and Fox
and the half-breed reservations being excepted.

THE
HALF-BREED
TRACT. By the treaty of Prairie du
Chien, July 15, 1830, what is known as the half-breed
reservation, in Richardson county, was set aside for the
"Omaha, loway, Ottoe, Yancton, and Santee Sioux
half-breeds." The reservation was surveyed as early as 1837
and 1838, and the western line was retraced in 1855. As
defined by the treaty, the reservation was bounded on the
east by the Missouri river, on the north by the Little
Nemaha, and on the west by a line starting from a point on
the Little Nemaha ten miles from its mouth, on a direct
line, the stream last named being the boundary line from the
ten mile point to the mouth at the Missouri river.
It was later found that a mistake had been
made, and a resurvey was ordered by Joseph S. Wilson, acting
commissioner for Thomas A. Hendricks, and all lines of the
former survey were obliterated. A portion of the land
included in the former survey was accordingly offered for
sale, and after the territorial organization, settlers and
speculators occupied the lands up the line of the former
survey. The new survey threw a considerable tract of the
settled land inside the reserve. The ambitious town of
Archer, the first county seat of Richardson county, was a
mile inside the reserve. The white claimants of the land
between the new line and the old, induced Fenner Ferguson,
then delegate to Congress, to procure the passage of a bill
arbitrarily adopting the old survey as the western boundary
of the reserve. The motive of the champions of the bill was
impugned in the House and a lively debate ensued. In the
meantime, the Missouri river had cut away some twenty
thousand acres.

274

HISTORY OF NEBRASKA

THE
APPOINTMENT OF
GOVERNOR
BLACK. Judge Samuel W. Black was
appointed governor of the territory in February, 1859, and
assumed the office on the 2d of the following May, Secretary
Morton having been acting governor since the departure of
Governor Richardson, December 5, 1858. The appointment was
gratifying to the people because the new governor was
popular, but more because their home rule sentiment was
gratified. Black's three predecessors had all been
importations, or rather exportations from far-distant
states, and though he had been sent from Pennsylvania as
judge of the second judicial district in 1857, yet there was
a popular feeling that he had become identified

THE IRON
MONUMENT MARKING
THE SOUTHEAST
CORNER OF
NEBRASKA

The above engraving is made from a
recent photograph taken from a point looking north and
east, showing the Missouri river in the background and
the south and west surface of the monument, with
"40o N. Lat." in relief letters on the west
side and "Kansas" on the south. The figure standing by
the monument is that of Mr. John Wright, staff artist
of the Morton History.

with the commonwealth. Indeed, comparatively, he was an
old citizen, and there been a popular call for his
appointment through the newspapers; and there was "great
rejoicing on the part of the entire press of the territory
over the appointment." The Nebraska City News, "the
first to raise the name of Black for governor," feels
particularly jubilant and happy. "His brilliant talents, his
legal learning, his quick, active and sagacious intellect,
his generous impulses and noble soul have endeared him to us
-- to the whole territory." Evidently Morton was not looking
over Milton Reynolds's editorial shoulder that day. For
Black had a besetting sin, very common, it is true, among
the politicians, and

FIRST TERRITORIAL FAIR

275

even those who held the high places of that time, but in
his case a serious clog to usefulness. Later -- April 16th
-- the News copies with great show of indignation the
following animadversion of the Washington correspondent of
the New York Tribune of March 8th:

"The opposition to the confirmation of Mr.
Black as governor of Nebraska was on the ground that he was
too intemperate. This was about two months ago. Ever since
that time he has been in this city illustrating the truth
of

From photographs by John Wright, staff
artist of the Morton History.

EASTFACE
NORTH AND WEST VIEW SOUTH
FACE

THREE VIEWS OF
THE IRON
MONUMENT AT THE
SOUTHEAST CORNER
OF NEBRASKA

the charges against him, and is at the present time
reduced to a sad condition." The raging News is soon
to drive this comparatively mild-mannered newsmonger and
utterer of "base and malicious lies, manufactured solely for
the benefit of the black republican party," entirely off the
field by its own unbridled charges along the same line.

FIRST
TERRITORIAL
FAIR. The first Nebraska territorial
fair was held at Nebraska City, beginning Wednesday,
September 21st,

276

HISTORY OF NEBRASKA

[NOTE --
J. N. H. Patrick was quartermaster of Nebraska
volunteers, 1861. He served four terms in the Nebraska
state legislature from Douglas county.]

CHAPMAN FERGUSON CONTEST

277

and lasting three days. Mr. Furnas, president of the
first board of agriculture, gives the following account of
this important function:

Last week we attended the first
Territorial Agricultural and Mechanical Fair at Nebraska
City. The result of this, not only the first Nebraska
Territorial Fair, but the first Territorial Fair ever held
in the United States, was most gratifying. It was a perfect
success, when we take everything into consideration. The
times are hard, and many at a distance felt that they could
not incur the expense of attending. The regular steamboat
packets were all out of order -- one sunk, and the other
fast on a sand bar -- and going to and fro in that way cut
off; we are in the midst of election excitement, and
everybody thinking and talking politics. Taking everything
into consideration, we repeat, the result was all the most
sanguine friends of the enterprise could expect . . .
The exhibition of stock, farm products,
mechanism, works of art, etc., were creditable indeed. Of
course there was not that variety to be found in the county
or state fair in the states. What there was, however, was
unsurpassed anywhere. The attendance on the last two days
especially was large -- all classes were there, from the
chief executive to the humblest citizen.
The records show that neither the
president nor the orator of the occasion was a pretender,
but that both had experimental knowledge of agriculture. Mr.
A. D. Jones, of the board of agriculture, in his invitation
to Morton to deliver the address, assures him that he is
eminently qualified to edify an audience of practical
agriculturists by reason of his position as a successful
agriculturist," and in the list of premiums awarded we find
these entries: Blooded horses, J. S. Morton, best stallion
over four years old, $4; and again, best stallion for
draught over four years old, $10; and still again, best
Suffolk boar, one year old, $5; and President Furnas is
credited with three first premiums for Devon cattle. But the
most notable feature of the fair was, or rather is, the
address by J. Sterling Morton. It was delivered, as
President Furnas states in his introduction of the speaker,
"from the improvised rostrum of a farm wagon, placed in the
shade of this native oak tree." The address is important
because it is a history of the first eventful formative five
years of the territory -- a remarkably realistic and lucid
history by an active, keen-eyed participant in the events he
pictures -- and because it brings us for the first time face
to face with a notable figure of the commonwealth. In his
exaltation of the home builder the young man of twenty-seven
forecasts a leading characteristic and channel of influence
of his maturer manhood. The closing, or prophetic part of
the address discloses the ability to "see straight and
clear" and to believe accordingly, while others, of only
ordinary vision, doubted or disbelieved.

CHAPMAN-FERGUSON
CONTEST. The regular biennial contest
over the election of delegate to Congress was decided in
favor of Ferguson, February 10, 1859, by a vote in the House
of Representatives of 99 to 93. As in the Bennet-Chapman
contest, the elections committee had reported in favor of
seating Chapman, the contestant, by a vote of 6 to 2. The
majority found that the total vote of Florence, as returned
by the canvassers, was 401, of which Ferguson had received
364 and Chapman 4, and that this vote should be thrown out
entirely, insisting that it was greatly inflated, and that a
year later it was only one-third as large -- 159. Making
some additional changes in minor precincts, they gave
Chapman a majority of 376. The minority consented to throw
out only 15 votes, which had been received at Florence after
the hour for closing the polls, and, contending that only
159 votes had been counted by the canvassers for Florence,
gave Ferguson 34 majority. The territorial board of
canvassers had given Ferguson 1,654 and Chapman 1,597. While
the final vote does not show a division along party lines,
yet there was a leaning toward Ferguson on the part of the
most pronounced republicans, and on the part of the leading
democrats toward Chapman. The three famous Washburne
brothers - Elihu of Illinois, Cadwallader of Wisconsin, and
Israel of Maine -- already all republicans, voted to seat
Ferguson; and Israel, who, with Boyce